Javier Valdez Cárdenas, Famed Narco Chronicler, Killed in Mexico

Journalist Javier Valdez Cárdenas, one of Mexico’s most prominent chroniclers of drug trafficking and organized crime, was shot dead in Culiacán, Sinaloa, on May 15. His slaying marks a new low in violence against journalists, a new high in the confidence of their killers, and the latest dark milestone in Mexico’s drug war.

Early news reports said that Valdez, 50, was walking towards his car at around midday when a vehicle pulled up beside him and shot him several times. He fell to the ground not far from the offices of the newspaper that he founded, Ríodoce, and was declared dead at the scene.

Pictures from the crime scene showed Valdez’s body lying in the middle of the road, covered by a blue sheet and surrounded by yellow plastic police cards marking where bullet shells had fallen. His emblematic Panama hat, which he often wore even during television interviews, was visible from underneath the sheet.

A video interview with Valdez, produced in 2012. Credit: Univision / Deborah Bonello

The charismatic Valdez was the winner of a number of national and international awards including the prestigious Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) International Press Freedom prize. He was the author of many books on organized crime, narco culture and drug trafficking, and Ríodoce is widely considered a pioneering, independent publication.

“Where I work, Culiacán, in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico, it is dangerous to be alive, and to do journalism is to walk on an invisible line drawn by the bad guys — who are in drug trafficking and in the government — in a field strewn with explosives,” he said when he accepted the CPJ award in 2011. “This is what most of the country is living through. One must protect oneself from everything and everyone, and there do not seem to be options or salvation, and often there is no one to turn to.”

The CPJ representative in Mexico described his death to InSight Crime as “an unspeakable tragedy.”

“He chronicled the drug war and ran the only independent magazine in Sinaloa despite the constant threat of violence,” said the CPJ’s Jan-Albert Hootsen.

InSight Crime Analysis

The killing of Valdez is the latest grim marker on Mexico’s drug war timeline, and a body blow to journalists as they near the end of what has been a dark decade for the profession.

Valdez had one of the highest profiles of any Mexican journalist, both at home and abroad, and was largely considered untouchable as a result of his fame. The attack, which took place in broad daylight, sends a message to all the country’s journalists: no one is safe.

This year alone, six journalists have been murdered. The state of Veracruz is considered the most dangerous place for journalists in the region. Violence against the press has risen since the Mexican authorities launched a militarized crackdown on drug trafficking and organized crime in 2006. A recent report on attacks on the media from the CPJ notes that the majority of cases of murdered journalists remain unsolved, their perpetrators unpunished.

The murder of Valdez comes the week after the emergence of a video that captured a Mexican soldier apparently executing an unarmed man in custody by shooting him in the back of the head. The execution not only highlighted the corruption within the Mexican armed forces, which are on the frontline of the government crackdown, but it also illustrated the inability on the part of the authorities to curb the rising violence in Mexico.

The authors of Valdez’s murder so far remain unknown. CPJ Mexico said that he had not reported any recent threats to his life, but when InSight Crime called him for comment last week on a story, he said he did not wish to be quoted for security reasons.

Valdez’s fame could increase the pressure on authorities to undertake a serious investigation into his killing, but the fact that he was murdered in broad daylight suggest his killers are not too worried about the consequences.

“At Ríodoce, we have experienced a macabre solitude because nothing that we publish has reverberations or follow-up. And that desolation makes us more vulnerable,” Valdez said in 2011. “Despite all of this, with all of you, and this award, I can say that I have somewhere to take shelter, and to feel less alone.”

Watch our May 18 Weekly InSight discussion on Facebook Live about the murder of Javier Valdez, with InSight Crime Senior Investigator Deborah Bonello and the Committee for the Protection of Journalists Mexico representative, Jan-Albert Hootsen.

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